The Force Awakens was awesome and I loved it

As my buddy Matt noted, The Force Awakens nails the, “They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Naturally, they became heroes” quality of the original Star Wars — something that the prequels completely missed.

I’ve been marshalling my expectations of Episode VII for the last year, telling myself it’ll be on a level with the prequels, and only weakened and allowed myself to get excited a couple of days ago (partly because of reading Andrew Rilstone’s countdown posts, which I highly recommend). The outcome that I was able to be not only delighted, but surprised that I was delighted. I had a great, great time, and am keen to see it again in the cinema — something that I have previously only ever done for three films.

I said to my son Matthew early in the film that TFA feels much more real than the prequels. I suppose I meant two things by that. One is that, like the original trilogy, the places feel like they’re where actual people live and work — it all feels lived in rather than shiny-new like everything on Coruscant and Naboo. But also there was something about the people that was much more believable — and it’s definitely related to the wrong-place-wrong-time thing that Matt mentions.

I like that we don’t know who, if anyone, Rey and Finn are related to. I hope no-one. I hope they just came out of nowhere. If Rey turns out to be another Han/Leia child I will be desperately disappointed. And if Finn turns out to be Lando’s son (it would have to be Lando, he’s the only other black person in the universe) I will lose all hope.

Matt thinks that TFA doesn’t feel as structurally clean as the other movies, even the prequels. I’m going to have to disagree here. It lacks the glorious inevitability of IV and the clean lines of V, but it makes at least as much sense as I or III, and way more than II.

Two more things that I loved.

First: it was a really funny film, in the way that IV and maybe V were and none of the subsequent ones have been. (I and II failed appallingly, of course, by trying to have Jar-jar handle the humour. IV and V work because of the interpersonal sparking, especially between Han and Leia.) There is a crisp, fresh wit about VII that reminds me very much of Joss Whedon’s work — a sort of Avengersy feel. (And since that is easily in my all-time top 10 films, this is definitely a good thing.) An example: Finn’s suggestion, when trying to figure out how to destroy the Starkiller, “We could use the force?”; and Han’s exasperated “It doesn’t work that way.”

Second, and this may be the single most important thing for this film, it did a great job of merging old and new. You see that approach at work in things like the updated but very recognisable ship designs: X-Wings, TIEs and Star Destroyers of course, all noticeably changed but unquestionably versions of the ships we know and love; but also things like the ship that Kylo Ren lands in, which is recognisably related to the old Imperial Shuttles.

More importantly, we see old stuff in a new light. A star Destroyer wrecked in the desert is not only a great image in its own right, but also a statement that we’re moving on from what dominated the old films. That stuff was great, but it’s dead now. Several people in the original trilogy thought the Millennium Falcon was junk, but now 30 years on, it’s so unregarded that it’s just sitting on the ground covered in a tarp. Yes, we love seeing it fly, but that scene isn’t just “Hey, it’s the Falcon!” It’s also how Rey and Finn bond, how Rey discovers she’s an awesome pilot, how Finn starts to live up to the story he’s created for himself. All the nostalgia (which is great, BTW), is not just there to wallow in; it’s used to advance some other aspect of the film.

One other thing about the experience of seeing it was very nicely captured in this blog-post:

Whereas I had grown used to waiting for things that I knew were already coming – like the reveal that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father, or the death of Obi-Wan Kenobi – I was finally watching a Star Wars movie with an audience full of people who had never seen it before, and didn’t know what was going to happen. We laughed at funny lines that hadn’t yet been turned into memes, we met new characters for the first time, and we were gripped by scenes of the heroes in peril without knowing if they were all going to make it. Afterwards, I wondered if this was how people had felt when they watched A New Hope on the big screen for the first time in 1977.

(Actually, it’s not how we felt in 1977, because so very much of the
story was known from comics, trading cards, TV spots and suchlike. But
I take his broader point.)

So VII is full of win, and I am really looking forward to seeing it again.

21 responses to “The Force Awakens was awesome and I loved it”

I suspect that more of the weaknesses of the film will become apparent on subsequent viewings (as opposed to, say, the weaknesses of the prequels which were largely visible on the first viewing.) There’s also a frustrating sense that many of those weaknesses may, in fact, be carefully structured story points (as, indeed, many of them turned out to be in the prequels) but it depends upon how they are eventually handled – or not.

But I definitely think that Abrams made this feel more like Star Wars than even I expected. And yes, I realise that’s mostly because he was, well, remaking Star Wars (A New Hope), rather than bringing an entirely new vision to it. But I imagine that’s what he was hired to do, so good for him.

I still want Rey to be a Skywalker of some sort. I just don’t think some random stranger would be able to do the things she did. It just hasn’t been indicated in the stories thus far (outside of Anakin being born of the force, but I really really don’t want it to be that) that this would be possible at this point in time.

My wife thinks she may actually be Han and Leia’s daughter and that Luke clouded the memory of Ren, Rey, Han, and Leia about the issue. That would be one action that would make him have to go into hiding, since its kind of a sketchy thing to do with the force.

I think its more likely she’s Luke’s daughter put into hiding when Kylo turned dark so she could not be found and turned by him. Luke was also to scared to train her because he would fear her turning as well. Also note that Max Von Sydow’s character knew Luke and was in close proximity to keep an eye on Rey.

If she’s not a Skywalker, they could have proven that easily with a better flashback for her, or memories and talking about her parents where they weren’t any of the main characters, but its all cloudy and hidden. In her flashback its indicated that she may have been near Luke at some time. It feels like they hiding something from us…. a feeling I haven’t had since…. ;-)

The reason I want her to be a Skywalker is that its the through line of the whole series, including the prequels. And with Kasdan writing the tight family drama that was Empire and Jedi, I think he’s doing the same here. Luke’s theme even plays when she gets his saber during the final battle.

However what I want more than Rey being a Skywalker is for Episode 9 to end with Ben Solo standing up to take on the task of restoring the Jedi knowing fully the temptations of the dark side and what needs to be done, and not done to successfully restore the Jedi. If this trilogy ends without the true Return of the Jedi, more than one please, I’ll end up disappointed.

I still want Rey to be a Skywalker of some sort. I just don’t think some random stranger would be able to do the things she did. It just hasn’t been indicated in the stories thus far (outside of Anakin being born of the force, but I really really don’t want it to be that) that this would be possible at this point in time.

Huh. Do you mean that she was able to use the Force at all, or that she was able to do so much with no training?

I definitely get the sense that she is immensely strong in the Force, much more than even she knows, and that she’s discovering this by accident, and doesn’t have any real handle on what she’s capable of yet.

Her mind trick on the stormtrooper came after she’d experienced Force telepathy via Kylo Ren. Like, at first she did not know that Force telepathy existed. Then Kylo showed her by inflicting it on her, but she turned out to be as strong or stronger than him. So that could have put the idea in her head that maybe she could do it to other people, in a controlling fashion, the same way that Kylo had attempted to do it to her. So the scene with the stormtrooper has a fairly plausible underpinning for how someone untrained could have done this. In showing Rey Force telepathy, Kylo Ren sowed the seeds of his own undoing (as he did at the beginning of the movie – if Ren had left the villagers alive, Finn would not have revolted, at least not in time to save Poe and help Rey).

I’m totally okay with Rey having gotten these powers without being a Skywalker. Back in TPM Qui-Gon described Anakin as a “vergence” in the Force. Presumably Snoke is talking about Rey when he describes an “awakening”. Maybe this is how people become aware of their Force powers if there are no Jedi around to find them early and turn them into younglings and padawans. Could also be why Yoda was leery of taking on an older student in ESB – maybe people who awaken to such power late in life tend to go off the rails. Anyway, if it could happen once with Anakin, it could happen more than once (I’m talking about the vergence, not the going off the rails, although that could apply as well).

And I’ll go further: like Mike, I sincerely hope Rey is not a Skywalker. The incestuous cross-linking of every possible storyline is what made the old EU feel so small, limited, and ultimately claustrophobic. Good riddance. I hope the new movies skew very hard in the opposite direction. So far, signs are good. (With all of that said, your argument about how Rey could be a Skywalker makes sense – the difference is that I admit that with great trepidation rather than happiness or hope.)

On your first question, I think its because of what she’s able to do with no training.

I have decided (in my own head) that its ok if she’s not a Skywalker, but I really really do not want her to be a vergence of the force, I didn’t really like that about Anakin. Ok, I hated that part of Anakin’s backstory.

Though I’d be ok with Rey not being a Skywalker, I’d be more ok with it had they just come out and shown it in _this_ movie. It would have been easy (trivial even), just show her totally unknown parents to us in the flashback where it appears she is being separated from them. Done and done. Speculation would be, who are those people, they’d obviously not be Luke, Leia, or Han. They did not do that. In fact, Rey’s flashback is linked to Luke’s lightsaber, and includes visions of her, Kylo, Luke, and well the one true all knowing of the Star Wars movies… R2-D2 (no really R2 actually knows pretty much everything about everything in Star Wars, think about it).

So my hope of her being a Skywalker is due to the fact that it’s not directly refuted. Kylo appears obsessed with her for reasons that he may not even know himself. There is a connection between them of some sort. It comes through very well in the movie too. The chasm that opens between them before Rey could finish him off is, I believe, the force’s way of saying they both have more to go through.

Anyway that what I think. If Rey’s not a Skywalker, they should have (and could have) shown us already. It just _feels_ like theres something missing, pieces of information we are not being shown or told. Remember Kasdan did this before in Empire; “there is another”. That’s all the line we got even though the speaking characters knew the whole truth. Note, it has been speculated that the full decision that Leia was Luke’s sister was made until later, however that also means that the payoff to “who is Rey?” could still not be completely decided either.

The reason I want it to be revealed that she is more than just another force sensitive person in the Star Wars universe is that they’re hinting that there’s more to her story so strongly. I mean the scene with Luke’s saber was shot, scored, and presented as a direct parallel to the cave scene in Empire. It was a scene that revealed possible implications of Luke’s destiny. Same goes here for Rey.

Side note, to get really Star Wars nerd here, do you really think Luke’s lightsaber would call out to Ezra Bridger if he were near it. I’d say no, because there would be no connection there. Just conjecture on my part, but Rey’s reaction to Luke’s (and Anakin’s) lightsaber is due to connection.

BTW if you don’t watch Star Wars: Rebels, you should, its a great show.

Dang it, I haven’t speculated about Star Wars like this since 1980. This is great!! :-)

I actually like the prequel a lot (The Phantom Menace is weakest according to me). It’s of course very different from the classic movies. It does have a “game of thrones in space” running throughout, although the real story is that of Anakin’s downfall. I enjoyed both aspects, and also the aesthetics of it.

I really liked the The Force Awakens as well. It’s clearly much closer to the classic movies. But my question is: isn’t it TOO close? I mean there is a new force user living on a sand planet, a new dead star, a new hastily thrown-together plan to destroy the dead star, a new force teacher on a remote planet… I won’t be disappointed if the trilogy ends up telling a familiar story, but I’d rather have it go for something new.

I also noted the humor. I liked it but I thought it was borderline: more of it would have really detracted from the movie. For a really bad case of that, see the first Avengers movie. I feels like the character don’t take the movie plot seriously, as they keep cracking jokes while very serious (and sad) things are happening. I want a film director to tell a story, not produce “entertainement”.

Well, Nicholas, I admit I did slightly sigh when it turned out the way to destroy the Starkiller was to have X-Wings make a run down a trench. There’s homage, and then there is just plain recycling. But otherwise, I was more than happy with the recurring elements you mention. The bottom line with desert planets — as both A New Hope and The Martian show — is that they look awesome. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss the crashed Star Destroyer for anything.

On humour: you and I may not be able to reach agreement here, given that Avengers is one of my all-time favourite films. My sense with both that film and TFA is that the humour mostly arises from the situations rather than being imposed on it. In other words, it’s not like an episode of Friends, which is funny because Chandler keeps reflexively cracking gags. It’s funny because of what’s happening. None of the funny lines in TFA struck as forced or unrealistic. (Or maybe one or two did at the time, but if they did, then I’ve forgotten.)

I enjoyed it too, but I couldn’t help but notice it was just a retelling of the original story, with just a shuffling of the deck a bit to make it seem original.

A cute, beepy droid is entrusted with something vital to assisting the Resistance (read Rebellion), ends up on a sand planet, in the hands of a young, good looking orphan, who happens to be a great pilot. The orphan teams up with a rebellious young man who is wanted by the authorities, and the two of them go on the run. The resistance faces a threat from an evil tyranny seemingly commanded by a guy in black wearing a mask and voice altering technology, who is killer with the force.

They’ve built a giant ball that can spit out a death ray and kill planets. (At one point, I swear there’s even an exact copy of the scene in Return of the Jedi where Leia is standing by a big screen waiting for the countdown til the death star will be capable of firing. I was waiting for the Ewoks to show up.) There’s a lot of fighting on a woodsy planet and explosions and a guy walks out on to a big gangplank thing trying to connect with his son. There’s a wise, wizened little creature who fills in the blanks and backstory and seems somehow connected to Luke in some unknown way.

The big killer ball – not yet functional – can be blown up via some perfunctory design liability that, if you blow it up, will blow up the whole thing. And the guy that looks somewhat like Wedge actually does just this. And in the end, the young orphan pilot flies off to some remote green place to meet the last wise Jedi who will hopefully tell her what the hell is going on, and what she has to do next.
:D

But I didn’t feel that at all as I was watching it; and the impression I get from those who have been it a second time (I haven’t, yet) is that even knowing what you just laid out, it still doesn’t feel like a retread.

During the movie I thought to myself. OK, this is EXACTLY the same as Episode IV. And while it’s doing a great job at that, what’s the point? At least the prequels created a huge new world in a context of immense possibility for interesting stories. But then I realised that Episode VII has its own charm, especially in the character of Kylo Ren. A Darth Vader wannabe, troubled that he cannot achieve greatness and cannot overcome his young-ness and ineperience. He desires ambitious things, but is pulled down by the traits inherited from his father, who never much cared for such big, important stuff. Now that’s a very interesting point of view and a reversal of the father-son relationship from the original trilogy.

And I also liked Rey in the end. I liked how she discovered the Force (But not how the Force awakened in her by touching Luke’s lightsaber – that was stupid! How did they recover it anyway?! It fell to the bottom of a gas planet!!!), even if it felt a bit rushed. But in the end it was believable. (Much more believable than a stormtrooper who can barely handle a blaster, duelling with a trained Force user. Kylo should have simply pulled the saber from his hand and cut Finn into pieces in an instant! I really don’t understand what they had in mind with that scene…)

So I would be really disappointed if it turns out that Rey is related with someone, especially the Skywalker family, or be someone special (although I fear it will be so, judging by how interested Kylo was in her even before he met her and even before she touched Luke’s saber, if I remember the chronology correctly), because it undermines her character. She doesn’t have to be someone special to succeed. The faith of the galaxy can’t depend on a single family! Otherwise it’s all the will of the midichlorians. There were tens of thousands of Jedi and Force sensitives in the galaxy. (By the way, where are the others that Luke would have trained by now? Was Ben the only one?! I might have missed the reference, but did Kylo kill them?!) The Force can be awakened in any who believe. And Rey is a compelling character on her own, without any added baggage.

There are big gaping holes, that will be hard to cover with believable answers, so I hope that the story won’t fall apart after such a great start. (And, like you, I wasn’t this excited at all before watching it)

Kylo Ren is the personification perhaps of JJ Abrams impossible situation: He cannot live up to his “grandfather’s legacy” (ANH, ESB, ROTJ being made by two generations passed). He feels like a young brash newbie, constantly having to prove himself with peers and audience (General Hux, First Order vs Lucas/fans) and make a film that’s going to have such an impact as ANH. They both essentially try to repeat the past, with similar outcomes? Oh oh. Too meta?

I’m glad I steered clear of all the spoilers – I was actually quite glad that Kylo’s parentage is revealed quite casually – no big reveal, and that the actual stars of the movie are the new actors; especially Rey (here I was thinking, hey how can Finn fight Kylo with a lightsaber, knowing that he’s some kind of ex-Stormtrooper – perhaps he was undercover – yes I knew next to nothing going in on purpose).

Seeing it with only knowing the history was very refreshing, not since going to see the Matrix with no *idea* (hold on, how come she can run round walls? That’s impossible? Wait a minute jump that far? Huh?) have I been wondering what happens next – which is weird because as everyone points out; TFA is basically “rebooted” ANH (+ a dab of ROTJ and ESB).

Sure there were a few moments when it was “so lets blow that thing, go in, shoot that thing, and yup, that’ll do it, lets go” planning – but Han’s joke line reminded me “It’s only a model^H^H^Hvie” in a good way; to sit back, enjoy the film as entertainment and less of a historically accurate nerdy precise documentary of the history of Star Wars (which we call the prequels?)

Plus BB-8 is awesome. How on earth did they get so much out of what my wife pointed out is “basically an orange/white robotic snowman” (I’d say with Road Runnder abilities… man he even goes Meep Meep almost). So cute. I’m sure I’ll be spending vast quantities of money on frivolous merchandise and saying “… and leave the blaster” (or whatever the line was).

Verdict: Way better than I hoped. Hard to compare vs. ANH and ESB until I see it a few more times and let it settle. Left wanting more… I was glad they at least got to show Rey finding Luke – otherwise my spleen would have exploded waiting for that pay off till May 2017.

Also, anyone know how Kylo got hold of Vader’s burnt skull? And why?? I’m assuming that Leia would have had to dig it out of the pyre on Endor and take it with, like a creepy family souvenir? Or maybe Luke did, and then passed it on, again for some creepy unexplained reason, to Ben Solo during his training? Even if this had happened, you’d think either Luke or Leia would have mentioned to him – Say, Ben, you know your evil grandad? Yeah, he had a change of heart at the end of his life. So, you know, don’t go building any shrines to His Evilness or anything…

“Star Wars, then, is a collection of action figures marked ‘mentor’, ‘hero’, ‘princess’, ‘companion’, and ‘villain’ being moved deftly around a huge a set of backgrounds marked ‘space ship’, ‘desert’ and ‘alien planet’ by the biggest kid in the universe.”

What the prequels proved was that adding stuff to that environment just takes stuff away. It was like taking those action figures and trying to tell a morally complex story with them, full of psychological and political intrigue. If that’s what you want to do, don’t do it with the action figures!

They were films made by someone who didn’t have the faintest idea what made Star Wars into Star Wars. They may have been made by the guy who originated the series but that’s beside the point. (It didn’t help that Lucas set himself a stiffer task at the same time he blatantly lost all interest in the series and merely phoned in his direction. But that just compounded the original error.)

So if you’ve decided to actually do Star Wars then you do the Star Wars deck, or you’re not doing Star Wars. So shuffling the deck becomes pretty much your only option. But there’s two things which mitigate against that just becoming a retread.

Firstly, there’s the generational aspect, which makes it it all happening again almost into a selling point. Seeing Rey take up the mantle and start doing Luke stuff isn’t the same as more Luke stuff done by some younger Lukealike. History repeats because that’s the universe we are in, so how could it not? Repetition becomes recursion. Which is compounded by the way the situation has moved on and the characters have aged pretty much in real time. Us oldies catch up again with Han and Leia, people we used to hang out with, while the younglings marvel at all that ancient history from years of yore.

Plus, to move from trading card to Tarot analogies, cards can be turned upside-down, or changed by the cards they’re now placed against. Same game, different hands. Rey might do Luke stuff, but she does it in the way Leia would. (If she doesn’t turn out to be Leia’s daughter, I will personally write to Vox Day and ask for his autograph.) Darth Vader’s classic line was “I find your lack of faith disturbing”. His successor finds his own lack of faith disturbing. Renn is a headstrong and temperamental young Goth, to the point I half-wondered if he was wearing the helmet to cover up his spots. Han takes Ben’s place above the abyss, and so on. It’s the recursion which frames and makes us notice the remixing.

Perhaps what’s most surprising is that it’s so similar to what Abrams did to Star Trek. He even had ‘our’ elder Spock show up to give some past advice to the new generation. And while Star Wars fans have largely taken to ’Force Awakens’, Star Trek fans hated his meddling. That’s most likely because Trek was about the characters and performances rather than action figure poses. Having seen Shatner’s Kirk, they didn’t want to see anybody else’s. Notably, probably the nearest exception to this is Han. Because Han Solo is Harrison Ford’s Han Solo, isn’t he? And Han gets treated differently. He both shows up before the other old timers, and gets more involved in the action.

My own take on what Gavin has said: I don’t think TFA is a re-tread at all. Or… if it is, then EVERTHING is.

I think it’s better thought of as an object lesson in history repeating itself if we fail to learn from it. And we almost always fail to learn from it. That’s the human condition. That’s part of why we tell these stories. Hoping against hope that we might learn someday.

If I give some of history a TFA-style review, then you might see this about WWII:

Germany goes to war against the world AGAIN. There’s fighting in woodsy areas and desert action AGAIN. Giant ships shoot at each other, only this time they’re much bigger. Etc, etc… Pretty much everything humans have ever done is a bigger and slightly more advanced version of the thing that was just done before.

Well hey, there’s secret information stored on a droid again. Well… yeah! He’s an X-Wing pilot… he’s always got an astromech droid. And hey, it’s small and mobile. That is like Vulcan-level logical given the circumstances. Plus, I think it’s delightful that either Poe hasn’t a clue that he’s just pulled an O.G. Princess Leia move OR, just as good, since he knows the General – what if he remembered one time when some of the most trusted members of the Resistance were sitting around sharing stories, she told the story of Darth Vader capturing the Tantive IV and her getting the Death Star plans to Obi-Wan on an astromech droid? That’s not a re-tread, that’s cosmic symmetry, baby. :)

As to the Starkiller base… Hey, a big round superweapon again… I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: people a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away just loved giant gun spheres. The way Americans love fried food and Brits adore comedy where men dress up like women. It’s just…their THING, you know? One of Gavin’s Star Wars cards.

And once you’re dealing with scales that massive… what’s left, anyway? What can destroy targets in such a way that it terrifies other planets into utter submission?

I actually would be curious to see what other destructive systems people would come up, given the spec:
1. Needs to destroy 1 or more planets in a single shot
2. Needs to be able to to so around the galaxy
3. Needs to do so in a very visible, terrifying way so as to keep local systems in line.

Crap. I always say I’m never going to do this, respond point by point on film discussions, but I always do… I guess I never learn from my own human condition. :)

2 more points:

1. I think Kylo and “The Seven” – never referenced by name in the film, but glimpsed in the flashback standing in the rain – killed all the other Jedi that Luke was training. I think the lumps on the ground in that rainy shot are all the bodies of the other students.

2. Rey has to be Luke’s daughter. Look at how Han and Leia look at her. Definitely their niece. (Now who’s her mother?? Scandal!)